# Leben

"It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future, and insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand. ('A Father's Story')."

"A blooming flower pleads, oh thee! Look at me, to see the beauty, Kiss me like a bee, To feel the bliss, To taste the nectar of life And just to feel and be. Kiss me like a wave kisses the shore In an endless dancing sea, again and again, just to be."

"There’s a little angel on one of my shoulders saying that this is a wicked thing to do. Then there’s a little devil on my other shoulder, and she looks a lot like you."

"Death loves death, not life. Dying people love to know that others die with them; it is a comfort to learn you are not alone in the kiln, in the grave."

"Let me dream so I can shape the world, let me dream so I can make others dream as well, but do not let me dream my days away; lest I sleep my years away too."

"That he will haunt the footsteps of his enemy after death is the one revenge which a dying man can promise himself; and if men had power thus to avenge themselves the earth would be peopled with phantoms. ('Eveline's Visitant')."

"Not forever does the bulbul singIn balmy shades of bowers,Not forever lasts the springNor ever blossom the flowers.Not forever reigneth joy,Sets the sun on days of bliss,Friendships not forever last,They know not life, who know not this."

"Within weeks of my arrival in New York, I was someone else, not because there had been a revolution in my psychological makeup or any trauma. It was simply this: people saw me in a light in which I had never been seen before."

"We thought we'd seen it all. The real horror of war is always waiting for you at home. It's waiting, I tell you. We were so damned happy when we got back. We'd made it. We survived. But it's always waiting. Waiting. You let down your guard. And there it is. You can't ever let up. Give up."